Talking with the dead
by Sleather Chonkers
Summary: Johnny's only survivor has a little chat with one of his victems.
1. Default Chapter

A conversation with a dead person.  
  
A/ N Just a short story I wrote a while ago and never got around to posting, I probably wont continue this.  
  
When the moon flew high across the tar slicked road, they remembered. Although they could not be seen , they remained intangible and persistent.  
  
Light as a shadow , but as stiff as board.  
  
The dead never forgot.  
  
"They call it the haunted house" and ominous voice attempted to whisper and Tess rolled her eyes attempting to fix her eye liner as she walked.  
  
"Tress original shorty" she laughed and the small boy next to her promptly kicked her in the shins.  
  
"I'm serious Tess!" he cried and she rolled her eyes. Baby sitting her sisters kid was hardly what she had expected to do on a Friday night , however here she was walking the brat home from the movies. He had insisted on seeing the matrix reloaded , possibly the worst film Tess had ever been forced to sit through. It was attempting to be complicated and deep but it just came off as rather confusing.  
  
" Michael we've discussed this before , the supernatural is just a belief system formed by misguided parents who tell their children horror stories in order to reinforce their own values" Tess said sarcastically tightening her coat.  
  
" Mom said you would say that , she says you a sink" Michael replied casually and Tess thought momentarily.  
  
" You mean a cynic?" she asked and Michael nodded.  
  
"Yeah that , do you think ghosts are really computer programs like in the movie?" he asked. Tess sighed and snapped the lid back on her eye liner and proceeded to put it in her coat pocket.  
  
"It's highly unlikely" she replied brushing a strand of short black hair away from her face.  
  
" Hey Tess?" he asked , she paused and they stood under the street light.  
  
" Yes Michael?" she asked impatiently.  
  
"What are those things on your head?" he asked , Tess found her head shaking involuntarily.  
  
"Those?" she asked lightly touching the scar tissue on her temples and Michael nodded.  
  
"Oh , my ex boyfriend and I were attacked in a parking lot by some psycho with a cattle prod a year ago" Tess said casually , although there was a slight tremble in her voice.  
  
"A cattle prod?" Michael asked raising an eye brow sceptically.  
  
"This is coming from the boy who believes in haunted houses" she stated as they walked in comfortable silence through the suburban streets. It was twilight and Tess watched as her breath condensed in the cold winter air . Secretly she felt relieved , she wasn't alone even if her company was an eight year old boy hyped up on sugar.  
  
"Tess?" he asked , he never called her Aunt or Aunty , she was far to young to really be any ones aunt.  
  
"Yes Michael?" she asked blazingly as the walked down a sleepy suburban street the dusky light filling the atmosphere with an almost comfortable warmth.  
  
" Do you believe in ghosts?" he asked and Tess was about to answer with a curt , no of course not.  
  
But then something flickered in her mind .A wave of nausea crept over her as she remembered something beyond a wall.  
  
Tentacles.  
  
darkness.  
  
And for some bizarre reason the Pillsbury dough boys.  
  
"I don't know" she finally said clenching onto the little boys fingers. She glanced around nervously , briefly remembering where she was.  
  
Alone , with a child she was responsible for.  
  
"What brought this topic up any way?" she asked dejectedly and he shrugged his shoulders.  
  
"Because were near the haunted house , I heard about it from a kid in my class he said he knew the kid who lived next to the haunted house and that kid went crazy and was locked up" Michael babbled and Tess smirked with good humor, it was amazing how urban legends started.  
  
"If the kid was crazy then he probably didn't see real ghosts" Tess reminded him and Michael shrugged his shoulders.  
  
"The kid lived next to a roach hotel , people checked in but they didn't check out baby" he crooned in a false blue brothers accent. Tess found herself chortling with amusement, Michael was an OK kid and so far he wasn't showing any signs of becoming a full paid member of the future Dick heads of America society.  
  
She wasn't really comfortable with the idea of having her own children , but others were relevantly OK.  
  
"You sound like you escaped from the rat pack" she chortled fiddling with the Celtic crucifix hanging from her neck. She used to wear Ankh's but she had gone off them for a while , the reminded her of something to do with those damn Pillsbury dough boys, they freaked her out.  
  
Unconsciously she began to slow down and she shivered in her stylish yet affordable black velvet jacket.  
  
'See that's it , the haunted house some times kids go here and throw rocks at the windows.. but I don't" Michael muttered trembling slightly and Tess clenched onto his hand. It was barely more then a shack , surrounded by dust and nothing else with the letters 777 scrawled across the front in thick flaking black paint. On either side there was dingy homes in disrepair , but they were lived in not desolate.  
  
If possible , there was the sense of being out side of watching something which belonged to a film she couldn't possibly belong to or change.  
  
"His gone" a wheezing voice suddenly called , and Tess could see some one a man skulking around the edges of the dirt yard a sorrowful look on his face.  
  
She stared at him , unable to move and hoping he was nothing more then an insane drunken homeless man.  
  
Michael however didn't react , he was babbling excited about how he and some of the guys were planning on breaking into the haunted house as soon as they had grown the balls.  
  
The voices owner looked up , frightened like a stunned rabbit and Tess swallowed loudly.  
  
"I was supposed to come back for a reason , they told me it wasn't enough to be afraid that he had to be taken down a few notches and sooner or later some one had to do it" he continued to babble and Tess noticed he was rather cute in a malnourished psychotic sort of way.  
  
"OK your obviously a fucking lunatic" she muttered expecting Michael to start shrieking with excitement the way he always did when some one swore.  
  
Instead it was as if Michael had been tuned out , he was steal their present in the scene however he also wasn't.  
  
How was she supposed to describe it , she could never really be sure.  
  
The crazy homeless man knelt against the gutter and for a second Tess was sure she saw his hand pass strait through it.  
  
However she blamed it on to many late nights with out coffee to give her a hyper sugar buzz.  
  
"You've seen him" he finally said as if really noticing he wasn't alone , Tess was not quite sure how to react to that statement. Perhaps it seemed forbidding and familiar , or perhaps this was merely some poor guy one of her many ex's had threatened.  
  
She couldn't be sure.  
  
He stood up lanky and thing , pushing up his glasses nervously.  
  
"I'm going to be going now" Tess said as calmly as possible beginning to drag Michael away.  
  
"You need to know I suppose , they'll all start coming sooner or later until they get what they want and believe me I'm one of the nicer ones" he finished in a sombre tone of voice then shrugging his shoulders he disappeared into the darkness.  
  
"Freak" Tess muttered under her breath and Michael gave her a nonplussed frightened stare.  
  
"See I told you this house was haunted" he admitted shrugging his shoulders.  
  
They walked away in silence and some where deep inside the bowls of 777 a torture device collapsed in on itself. 


	2. chapter two

A/N Despite the fact that NO ONE has reviewed this story I decided to continue for myself.  
  
The haunting started on perhaps a Friday, although the signs had been long evident. Things moved around Tess's apartment of their own accord, she heard the faintest sounds of some one singing late at night and when she would awake the television would be switched off although she knew she fell asleep while watching an old b grade horror movie.  
  
On Friday how ever, he appeared.  
  
The ghost had followed her home.  
  
Tess, convinced quiet rightly that she had finally gone insane did her best to ignore him, she continued to go to her liberal arts classes down at the community college and to her job at a printing store down the street. He never said anything, however Tess would some times arrive home and find her books scattered all over the apartment open at different pages as if he was reading.  
  
At first it made her uneasy, there was after all a strange young man appearing occasionally in her apartment and she wondered if it happened because she was lonely.  
  
Things had gone downhill since she stopped dating, why in the old days she would go out every night to different pressing social occasions.  
  
Sure, she hated the people she went out with but wasn't it better then being alone?  
  
Still, he was quiet he stayed out of her bedroom and he spent most of his time being invisible. It was quite easy to forget he was there, and as the weeks turned into months she grudgingly had to admit that she thought nothing about seeing a floating TV guide pass through her head or waking up on the couch with a blanket strewn around her shoulders.  
  
Then, with out even realising it she began to talk to him in a mad absent minded sort of way. She would tell him what happened to her at work that day, or remark on the movies she watched curled up on the couch. Some times if she did go out with her loser friends she would arrive home late to an empty dark apartment and begin bitching about Ann or Cleo loudly because they always insulted her hair behind her back.  
  
He never talked back of course, just remained silent occasionally appearing and staring at the world with half lidded bemused eyes.  
  
On March the 18th he spoke for the first time, it was a sticky humid morning and Tess was preparing to go to work, applying on thick amounts of water proof eye liner while clipping aside her short black hair with a plain silver clip. As she adjusted her glasses in her bathrooms mirror admiring the affect she felt his presence behind her. After months of his silence she had gotten used to it, it wasn't the feeling of some one walking over your grave exactly rather it was like having a cold breeze touch her neck.  
  
He opened his mouth and she expected him to say something deep and meaningful the way ghosts should but instead he blinked as if confused.  
  
"Your out of cereal" he said helpfully and Tess frowned momentarily stunned.  
  
The first thing she did was go to her pantry and he was right, the box of fruit loops she always had for breakfast was now empty.  
  
Damn, she'd have to buy something to eat on her way to work.  
  
"I like your glasses" he said that night as she lay on the couch painting her nails a deep green while watching queer eye for a strait guy on the tube.  
  
"Hmm?" she questioned non committal as if she had imagined it she was afraid she was imagining more and more lately.  
  
"They look good, the way that you wear them with out caring about what people think" he suddenly said and Tess laughed, the day she stopped caring about what other people thought was the day the earth would crash out of its orbit and spin into the sun.  
  
" I like my old ones better, but they went missing after the accident" she began and he remained silent, he knew all about the accident.  
  
"What's your name any way?" she suddenly asked him turning her head slightly and he wavered slightly flickering in and out of perception.  
  
"It's hard to remember, its like memories arnt important any more you know?" he questioned and she nodded, yes she knew.  
  
"I think it was Edgar?" he questioned himself and Tess narrowed her eyes, it was an unusual name.  
  
"Just Edgar?" she asked and he stared at her confused.  
  
" My last name, it wasn't Anglo-Saxon it was Spanish or Portuguese.. some sort of south American name" he remembered and Tess recorded the information for later use. Waving her finger nails dismissing she cocked her head towards the now named Edgar.  
  
"Do you want to see what else is on?" she asked him and he shrugged his ghostly shoulders.  
  
"It's not important, although I like the movies you watch late at night" he admitted and Tess felt an involuntary smile.  
  
all right, so he was dead and possibly just a figment of her imagination but it was better then admitting she was lonely, or worse yet getting a cat.  
  
The computers in the Internet café hummed quietly accompanying the sound of geeks playing doom across three different computers. Tess walked in uncertainly, while having the Internet at home in order to post ones meager gothic ramblings was considered expectable, stepping into an actual Internet cafe was social suicide.  
  
Still, she couldn't search at home there was no way of knowing how Edgar would react if he discovered her and the last thing she needed was an angry poltergeist on her hands.  
  
Angry boyfriends were bad enough.  
  
Nervously she sat by one of the computers and began typing a url into the web browser. What she was doing was perfectly acceptable, she was merely reinforcing her own sanity, making sure she had not completely fallen off the deep end with no hope of returning.  
  
But the lingering question remained, what if she founded nothing? what if she was forced to admit that Edgar was a sign of serious mental illness?  
  
She remembered after the attack the doctors had sent her to a shrink to test her for trauma but he found nothing, he remarked once that perhaps one day it would suddenly appear and she would suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome.  
  
Was this part of it? she couldn't be sure exactly all she knew was she was seeing a dead man, for godlike she was starting to like a dead man. The local law and enforcement bureau's web site loaded and she pulled up the missing persons page .Tess sighed with frustration for there were over six hundred hits, it seemed impossible that so many residents could go missing with out a trace in two years. Straitening her glasses Tess scrolled downwards and after three pages her eyes lit up as she saw the letter E, appear several timed.  
  
"Edgar Vargas, well it's definitely not Anglo-Saxon" she muttered to herself clicking onto the link. The page began to load a picture and she drummed her green nails against the computer desk impatiently. After a few moments it appeared in full, a young man standing outside a youth crisis centre wearing glasses with a shy expression on his face his left hand lightly touching his goatee.  
  
Around her she heard the sounds of triumphant cheers as another computer game was one, but she could scarcely breathe.  
  
Attempting to appear as calm as possible she hit the print button, well one thing was sure she could rule out Edgar being a figment of her imagination.  
  
"Did you know that you went missing fourteen months ago" she yelled loudly as soon as she entered her apartment tossing her keys onto the living room's sofa.  
  
"And you started haunting me two months ago, funny about that I bet if we probed fucking harder it would be the anniversary of your death or what ever" she added but Edgar remained silent. Tess continued to walk around her kitchen clutching onto the missing persons report waiting for him to make his presence known.  
  
"Your name was Edgar Vargas , you worked at Christian teen crisis centre as a youth counselor, they noticed you went missing after you didn't show up for work for the third day in a row" she continued bitterly.  
  
"You were twenty three years old" she added as an after thought and the draws in her kitchen slammed.  
  
"What happened to you Edgar? the reports suspected suicide" Tess insisted and the draws closed violently vibrating the counter.  
  
"Was it suicide? or did some ass hole robbed you leaving you for dead?" Tess continued refusing to be scared off.  
  
"And why me? why have you decided to play this fucking me and my shadow act for the past three months? I don't understand!" she screamed and she heard a low murmur of Edgar's voice.  
  
"I thought you of all people would understand" his quiet voice, trembling with bottled up rage suddenly said.  
  
"Understand what?"  
  
"About being lonely" was his reply and Tess leant against the counter exhausted.  
  
"I don't want to be found" he insisted and Tess sighed.  
  
"Trust me you don't want to spend eternity haunting my apartment" she replied.  
  
There was a quiet pause and she felt the cold presene behind her neck.  
  
"Yeah, I do" he replied and the presene was gone.  
  
Tess didn't call for him, she knew from past experience that when Edgar disappeared he wouldn't come back until he wanted to be found.  
  
"They call it the haunted house" she muttered bitterly echoing her nephews words from all those months ago. 


End file.
